Post First Contact

By GA Douglass

When the first alien ambassador to Earth arrives the initial confusion is only the beginning of problems. With the concepts of science, technology, resources, and military might utterly transformed the world is torn between the struggle to adapt and the entrenched forces of the status-quo. As the underpinnings of the old world erode, with the prizes of unimaginable wealth and power on the line, and with the extinction of the species as a looming threat the great powers secretly maneuver and leverage to their advantage.
Young, idealistic, and underappreciated Sarah Thompson finds herself at the center of events. Former sales clerk, sometimes artist, and contracted troubleshooter she has no way of knowing that she has been selected for a bigger role. Once on the center stage of the crucible it will take all of Sarah's wit, skill, and training to survive in a world Post First Contact.
First book in the Post First Contact trilogy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: GA Douglass
• Release date: Jul 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311667977

GA Douglass

GA Douglass is a trained IT professional holding a BS from SLU who served in the United States Navy and has worked in the electronic security industry. Aside from writing science fiction his interests include history, science, and creation of the odd artistic doodle. He lives in Dacula, Georgia with the obligatory cat.

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POST FIRST CONTACT

Published by GA Douglass at Smashwords

Copyright© 2014 by GA Douglass, all rights reserved.

Cover art by GA Douglass

Post First Contact is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are, fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Comments and questions may be directed to [e-mail]

Special thanks to my parents, my brother and sister, Greggory Basore, Tiffany & Chelle Beckstine, and everyone else whose support and contributions helped to buoy me through this process.

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Post First Contact

By GA Douglass

Prelude:

Hate and fear are implicit survival reflexes. Hate and fear are supposed to steer the members of a species away from dangers, and therefore improve their odds of survival, however in humans they seem to be applied almost randomly. Humans possess the capacity to develop powerful emotional connections to things that have no bearing on them or their survival whatsoever, and most bizarrely they can even hate and fear things which directly benefit them.

-Ech Kha Neth Kahsh Sho Noth, ambassador to Earth, archived statements

In the Sol system, something waited in the trailing of Jupiter’s orbital wake. Dark, silent, and to all outward appearances inert the mass would fall away from the great gas giant only to close again some months later, but always maintaining the same distance from the star both bodies orbited. This dance had been going on long enough for the mass to have gathered a company of small satellites to itself, an entourage consisting mostly of dust stolen from not too distant Jupiter and its moons.

Upon casual examination of the roughly spherical mass, with its rough grey metallic surface so heavily cratered, pitted, and scarred, it could have easily been mistaken for a small moon itself. This illusion of the craft as a natural satellite was shattered by the forest of antenna, both active and passive sensor booms, jutting out at irregular intervals across its surface. The combination of its purposefully engineered and environment sculpted features resulted in giving the vessel an appearance remarkably reminiscent of a much magnified fungal spore.

The bizarre appearance was in part due to the extreme age of what was a famously mysterious ship. It had existed for a very long time, at least for as far back as the surviving records went, and even further into the time of myths and legends predating all current civilizations. That its existence predated all current galactic civilizations, along with those that had preceded them, was about all had been known with any great certainty about the artifact.

To be master of this ship was to be in possession of a powerful and unwieldy enigma. Who had originally built it was a matter of speculation and debate, although the Gardeners, the generic term for mysterious precursor civilizations, were often assumed to be responsible. In spite of the difficulty in coaxing even the most modest responses from the vessel it had been, as a largely intact product of some long vanished precursor civilization technology, covetously prized, exploited, and studied, only to be seized, stolen, or lost, time and again. Passing from the being to being, none of whom proved able to grasp the intricacies of its construction, the craft dispassionately turned its considerable abilities to the tasks it was commanded to accomplish. Under its current master it now operated far from the warmth the system’s star as it maneuvered within the orbital path of the great gas giant with a new name that translated into terrestrial English as Petalshard.

Indifferent to its own history the Petalshard seemed to perform its feats for any who could learn how to command them. It did so equally and without respect to the ideologies and objectives of tyrants, researchers, or fools. The ship had proven equally indifferent to those around it, for as surely as great civilizations had flourished with the power it promised, just as many civilizations had fallen around it, all without provoking the slightest uncommanded response from the vast machine mind housed within. It was as if every event was simply data to be recorded and stored as it waited for something else entirely.

Petalshard’s current master had turned the ship’s abilities towards accomplishing an arguably altruistic agenda. So it monitored the designated target world, and orbited that world’s star, feeding the information gathered deep within itself where the data was translated, formatted, and relayed to a specially rigged life support encasement. There the information was presented in a virtual reality simulation designed to prepare the vessels lone occupant for the work ahead.

Petalshard would have continued its task endlessly if it had been so ordered, but the time allotted for preparation had ended, and so the life support encasement’s thick metal doors folded open. Warm recycled air heavy with moisture spilled out to mix with the frigid arid atmosphere of the ship turning into a thin fog that rolled lazily to the deck plates. Lights along the bulkheads flickered to life, but what had once been ample lighting to the alien’s eyes was now too feeble to fully defeat the darkness and left the room and all its contents shrouded in shadow. Disturbed by the new activity drops of condensate, which had formed on the encasements interior, began to fall as a light rain within it.

Falling water droplets in space. It was a novelty that hadn’t worn thin on the ambassador after having spent the majority of his life without the luxury of gravity at all. Of course this wasn’t true gravity, if it had been the ship would have collected a lot more than dust motes from its solar neighbor. Instead of gravity the same practical effect had been achieved by imbuing two halves of the ship with counter amounts of inertia produced through the same mysterious means that propelled the craft. Since the two halves tried to move in different directions they managed to cancel each other out as a motive force, but the effect for things within the hull was as if everything were under what the ambassador considered a rather oppressive full terrestrial gravity. It was just one of the changes he had forced himself to acclimate to.

Much had changed for the Petalshard’s current master, both through purposeful physical alterations made to prepare him and as a side effect of using the virtual reality simulation itself. As a result of these changes a recording made prior to entering the encasement was now rendered into an immediately unfamiliar voice speaking in a strange barking language. The thought that he might no longer be able to comprehend his own words prompted a surge of panic to grip him which was quickly subdued with a practiced exercise of will. It took only a few moments of focus to re-familiarize himself with his voice and the language he had been born to. After concluding its introduction the voice paused awaiting a sign from the encasement that the ambassador was sufficiently conscious to continue.

It was only with some reluctance that the new ambassador to Earth transitioned back into a more physical awareness of his natural body. The encasements virtual reality simulation that had been fed into his mind, while undeniably useful as a training tool, had also proved much more real and enticing than he’d expected. Leaving the perfection of its program he found himself abruptly back in less than perfect reality of his own body, and it was a jarring experience.

Proceeding with extreme caution, he lay still as cold air caressed his body and the droplets of condensate sucked heat from wherever they chanced to land. That same warmth generated by his body worked together with the aridness of the room to dry the condensate rain that had fallen on him while he focused on bringing his mind back into the now. Once sufficiently dry he opened his eyes just enough to allow a sliver of dim light in and winced at the pain from protesting nerves grown unaccustomed to use.

Satisfied with this activity the recorded voice continued in its dialog and began to list the ambassador’s objectives. There was much that needed to be accomplished. In fact, there was too much. It had been an easy choice to take on this task, which had seemed so irresistibly lucrative at first. Now fully revealed in the light of its propinquity his mission stood as an absurd impossibility, and quite possibly as a suicidal undertaking.

No matter. The ambassador spoke aloud in the terrestrial language he had struggled so hard to master. It was startlingly strange to make the sounds with his own voice, feel it rumbling out of his own throat, and hear it with his own ears.

Tones of the new tongue contrasted sharply with the recording he had made prior to entering the encasement, and yet at the same time it was a comfort. The disconnection between the sounds produced by their speaker spoke of preparation, and he had been raised to believe that preparation was the herald of success. Training had been long and hard, a test of mental endurance. Buried within the confines of the life support encasement, in what had at times had seemed an endless virtual reality routine, he had grappled with the concepts that humanity had used to build its civilizations. The program had immersed him in the culture of this new world, the most promising culture that the world had to offer anyway, and after a long struggle, it had opened up a way forward. He now had a path to walk, one step at a time, towards his goal.

One hand moved first. It flexed at the wrist almost spasmodically and with none of the intended precision its controlling mind tried to impart to it. Thereafter and before attempting any activity requiring significant coordination each muscle and joint was methodically stretched; digits, limbs, arching his spine, as the ambassador became comfortable once again within the shell of his body. For each tentative test of physical response the sensation was of the mental orders coming only after a delay and then being first too little and then abruptly too much. Every movement was slow and clumsy and everything felt far too heavy; although this last was undoubtedly a result of the high gravity conditioning his body had received.

In order to survive his prolonged stay on the Terran world much of his physical form had been surgically altered and environmentally conditioned to an extent that left little that was immediately recognizable. The changes were intended both to improve his body’s ability to function in the strong pull of terrestrial gravity and oppressive heat of its too close primary. Now faced with the reality of having doubled his natural mass in skeletal and muscular structure as well as extended thermal insulation and radiation capacity he momentarily recoiled at the thought of how he must now appear. Ultimately it was all necessary and the Terrestrials would certainly not have been able to tell the difference even if they had a baseline of his species standard physiology for comparison.

After some time the routine of physical re-familiarization came to its end, and the process of the mission itself began as one digitigrade foot extended out of the encasement. The room the foot was extended into was significantly and uncomfortably colder than the micro climate it left. As the foot’s toe-pads touched firmly down upon the cold metal deck plating there was a pins and needles sensation from the contact, but there could be no withdraw, and in determination more and more weight was shifted to the digits and the pins became knives threatening to mutilate the toes. This pain was not in the least unwelcome as it marked proof of his commitment, and commitment was what it was all about.

He struck the deck plating hard with one foot and then another. Again he slammed hit unprotected feet into the unyielding metal as hard as he could so that pain from the impacts shot up through the unfamiliar limbs. Pain, both the sharp stab and dull ache, was always familiar. It seemed as if each jolt served to reunite him with his own body.

Stopping short of a full body bruising took an effort of will. The phrase 'sharer of bruisers' was as close as his species got to the word friend, but this sort of behavior would not be acceptable for his interactions with the Terrestrials. Restraining himself from piercing skin might have been a sign of respect among his own people, but the natives would not take such attacks so lightly.

This Terran species, arrogantly self proclaimed as Humanity, was both an obstacle and a potential solution. Their great potential was married to an obsession with elevating a select few with accolades, titles, and fame. It was in this way that they consistently denied the potential within themselves. If he could force them out of their closed way of thinking they might be transformed into the catalyst for change that he hoped they could be.

In his role as ambassador he understood that it was no small thing to ask a people to reject one perspective in favor another. It would be hardest for those in power whose worldly positions depended on everyone agreeing to that certain perspective. Even for those at the bottom of society it wouldn’t be easy, violence was almost certainly inevitable, and if the species decided to reject their destiny then the greater plan would certainly fail.

Just because the Humans couldn’t be deceived into taking the road and no physical force could be used to compel them onto it didn’t mean they couldn’t be manipulated. An elaborate plan of interlocking incentives and threats would goad them forward, but commitment would require something more. Showing them the path would be one thing, but getting them to walk it of their own free will would take the right conditions.

These humans would have to commit themselves, and it would be an unavoidably disruptive and painful process, especially so for those in positions of power and influence. Too much of their current global power structure was invested in maintaining the status-quo through means both overt and subtle. Keeping those powers mollified until it was too late for them to reverse the flow of events would prove complex, and keeping them from utilizing violence would probably prove impossible.

Fortunately, all that the plan truly required was people who were both possessed of raw talent and unfettered by prior allegiance, the sort of people which their world had in abundance. They would have to embrace their new role if the plan was to have a chance of succeeding. Careful selection of those who would be in the position to lead by example then molding them into the people that they needed to be when the critical time came was the path forward.

Few decisions are obviously as pivotal and so are not provided such painstaking preparation as first introductions with a new species. Most choices are minor affairs that seem to account for little in the great scheme of things, and some choices are given consideration truly disproportionate to their true merit. How a being perceives a choice depends almost entirely on its relationship to those things that person holds as being of value and importance, and people, being the unique individuals that they are, hold in high esteem things ranging from words, concepts and places, both the trivial and the absurd.

Chapter 1: A Day in the Life

The search for identity is ubiquitous to the human spirit, and so we define ourselves by both external associations and internal philosophies. We can define ourselves with our actions, and when we do then we are defined by how others perceive what we’ve done. We can define ourselves by what we believe and hold true to, and when we do then we are defined by how well we live up to our own standards. Because defining other helps us define ourselves belief and action are inextricably intertwined, but how seldom they truly meet.

-Sarah Collins, Of Hopes and Fears Published 105 PFC (Post First Contact)

Orlando, Florida

1:42 AM, December 14th, 0 PFC

I'm not going to die like this. Sarah Thompson woke with her heart racing and the dire words on her lips.

The dream faded from memory and existence. Sarah's heart slowed and even having spoken the words passed from her awareness. The weight of sleep and the tempting comfort of bed lulled her eyes closed once more, with only one thing preventing the return of sleep.

A generic electronic beeping was coming from somewhere in Sarah tiny apartment. Although whatever was producing the tone was somewhere nearby (it could hardly have been a great distance without being outside) Sarah couldn’t identify exactly what it was making the noise. Compounding Sarah’s frustration the sound had the eerily directionless quality synthetic sound tended to have further obscuring its source.

Burying her face in her pillow, Sarah hoped that it was something other than her cellular phone. She decided that if the beeping stopped soon it would have to be emanating from her phone, since her phone like most electronic items powered by battery had safeguards to prevent it from draining the battery unnecessarily. If, on the other hand, the sound were coming from the apartment’s lone smoke detector, carbon monoxide alarm, or her mini-refrigerator, then the beeping could, and likely would, go on indefinitely. The thought of dealing with any of these possibilities wasn’t enough to propel her out of bed.

Abruptly the beeping stopped. Shortly it was followed by a long and low plaintive tone. It had been her phone all along as she had suspected.

Sarah knew with the crystalline certainty of a perpetually well organized mind that the device was currently resting underneath the breakfast nook that she used as a makeshift desk. That was where it had landed around midnight. Although she had thrown the phone with some force and more than a little anger there was some calm and objective part of her mind had simply cataloged the event. Even the fact that the phone had bounced twice, once off a wall and again off a chair before coming to rest, had been neatly filed away.

Remembered with much less objectivity was the fact that she had been stood up last night by the latest product of her specifically relationship defective life. By midnight, she had yet to receive so much as send a text message in excuse of their absence. It was the most recent in a lifelong string of choices for companionship that ended in abused consumer electronics.

Through both high school and college, Sarah had tended to attract the sort of person that had to be somewhere else. It wasn’t as if they ever purposefully avoided her, more as if fate itself dictated that they simply not be and so arraigned for her romantic interests to be surreptitiously separated from her at key moments. This even extended into her family life with her own father mysteriously abandoning Sarah and her mother ten years ago, never to be heard from again.

Last night had set a record pace for fate’s sadistic game, leaving Sarah ticketless outside of the comedy club where they had agreed to meet. She’d waited an hour, window shopping to avoid pacing in front of the building, and repeatedly making just one more call that would invariably roll over to voicemail. She’d waited an hour further in a cafe across the street, before looks of pity from its staff compelled her to call it a night.

It was the consensus of everyone who knew Sarah, and who bothered to give the matter any serious thought, that her lack of success with relationships was completely inexplicable. There seemed to be at least one new promising prospect each year and each year everything managed to not work out. The result was a steady undercurrent in conversations involving Sarah, and frequently involving her in her absence, that speculated as to the cause of this effect.

While closer to average than drop dead gorgeous Sarah was athletically fit and maintained an impeccably managed appearance. Her face was framed by russet hair kept professionally off the shoulders, and set with naturally color matched eyes. At a youthful twenty-six Sarah was still well in her prime, and she knew it, even if not everyone else recognized that fact.

One of Sarah's married friends insisted that a little cosmetic surgery would transform her from simply pretty to stunning. Sarah's doctor had been insisting for the past eight years that she needed to lose just a few pounds. In fact to the casual observer of faces in a crowd Sarah would not have immediately stood out as being considered attractive.

It wasn’t until people actually made eye contact with Sarah that they found out their first impressions were utterly wrong. Sarah Thompson had the sort of indefinable charisma that radiated as a sort of contagious energy. People wanted to like Sarah.

Sarah’s head removed itself from its pillow refuge reluctantly and sleepily. It hadn’t been any of the personalized ringtones for her mother or close friends so it must have been work trying to reach her. Not her place of employment, but an actual employment opportunity, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Employment, paychecks, and rent being what they were, she had no real choice except to investigate.

In reality, the apartment was little more than a single elongated room, divided into partitioned sections, that through careful decoration was able to impart the impression that it was merely the entrance to a grander abode. There was nothing Sarah could do to make the space larger, although with strategically placed mirrors a sense of adjoining rooms had been created. In addition to the mirrors, there was the pair of reproduction Van Gogh’s, Sarah’s prized de Boer sculpture, a stand of scented candles, and with the generic cream colored plastic switch plates replaced with gleaming copper. There was little that remained undecorated, simply and budget wise, although some friends had commented that it looked cluttered and in the low light of early morning Sarah was forced to agree.

Eschewing the slippers by the side of her bed, a present from her mother who had lived her whole life in Buffalo, Sarah padded over to the desk in her pajamas. Geography was just one aspect of the disconnect that ran the length and breadth of Sarah’s relationship with her mother. Somehow nothing managed to come between them for long, even if their conversations were frequently interrupted by Sarah’s exasperated sighs.

Without looking Sarah knelt down, and reached under the converted countertop, to retrieve her phone. The maniacal grin of a cartoon bunny painted in bright pastels greeted Sarah as the phone emerged from its resting place. A small triangular chip near the rabbit’s oversized right ear revealed the glossy black plastic beneath, it would be a lasting reminder of the latest round of rough handling the device had gone through.

Sarah ran a finger over the fresh scar. Her homemade artwork would have to be repaired, or replaced with some new work to express the inexpressible. Either case would mean disassembling the phone yet again, which in turn would mean borrowing her friend’s industrial air purifier to protect the device’s inner workings from the ravages of dust motes as well as the dander from her neighbor’s dog which she sometimes looked after.

A quick glance at the display confirmed both that it was barely past five in the morning and that it had indeed been work that had called, as the number on the display contained three digits as an identifying code. The code digits signified the call as being from one of the, frequently rotated out of service disposable phones, which the mayor’s office used to contact its unofficial and irregular employees. It was such a hassle to regularly switch out the phones, and the sort of contract work that Sarah handled was so mundane, that it hardly seemed worth the effort. Sarah suspected someone highly placed within the administration of being obsessed with cheap spy or crime novels, possibly both. While a certain amount of closed mouth confidentiality was necessary in any government work, to extend it to what Sarah did was either an expression of pathological disorder or a labor of love, possibly both.

Inspection of the phone’s inbox revealed, in code of course, that she had been scheduled to meet in an hour at the Orlando Mayoral Office Annex. It was a nondescript building located down the street from the official offices of the Orlando Mayor, and as far as Sarah was concerned, this was standard business procedure. The annex wasn’t even city property, meaning that the regular rules for city government technically didn’t apply there, or at least a lawyer could make that argument. In addition to being useful for circumventing red tape, the site was a perfect meeting place for anyone the mayor or his staff needed to do business with, but didn’t want to be seen with.

As with most people, Sarah’s employment was a source of continuous frustration in her life. Her role was one of as freelance troubleshooter for those problems thought best kept off the public’s radar, and a deniable asset to target with blame should things go wrong. While the position was considered disposable, and had seen a number of predecessors, Sarah had managed to maintain the position though a combination of skill, talent, and the raw determination to prove worthy of a more permanent placement.

Not that either the work itself, or the pay, were particularly distressing. Although Sarah might have been dealing with other people’s problems, she was adept at it. While there were many on the mayoral staff that did the routine paperwork, the processing of requests and complaints, Sarah managed the delicate renegotiations that required both diplomatic flare and subtlety. Her ability to handle people resulted in issues that were resolved quickly, to her client’s satisfaction, and could command considerable fees.

If it hadn’t been for the extended periods of down time between assignments, the work would have been a lot more bearable. A single additional day of work each month would have brought in enough money to put her ahead of her debts and allowed her to start building a nest egg. Over the past two years, the impermanent nature of her position had managed to keep her living hand to mouth, but this call was decidedly different. This particular summons had come within a week of her previous job, making the timing alone enough of an incentive that she didn’t grouse at the lack of time allotted to get dressed and make her way across town.

Due to the limited storage capacity of her miniature apartment’s lone closet, Sarah never had to devote too much thought to her business apparel. Pants suits had once again come into vogue among anyone who wished to portray themselves in a serious and professional light. Sarah hated pants suits, and so instead she wore a somewhat old fashioned navy blue business skirt suit. It was a look that suited her.

Given the time of Sarah’s appointment, midmorning weekday traffic, and her intolerance for tardiness, Sarah elected to complete the process of applying makeup behind the wheel of her silver, second hand, second generation, Fiat Panda. Eschewing the interstate, with its unpredictable rush hour traffic, she sped down back roads in combinations that would have surprised lifelong residents of the city. Arriving at the mayoral annex with six minutes to spare, Sarah parked her little car in the vacant alleyway next to the low-rise office building.

Still buckled into the driver’s seat and gripping the steering wheel Sarah took a deep breath and released it slowly. She seriously considered simply heading home, to spend the day working through the job sites that she perpetually scanned anyway. It wasn’t even that the work was particularly arduous, just a frustrating limbo with which she had to contend, and a paycheck was a paycheck.

Some of her friends were vocally jealous of Sarah’s arraignment with its sparse hours, and everyone offered advice. Her gainfully employed friends made a point of suggesting that Sarah switch fields. There was always demand for talented hardworking self-starters, although what field this might be changed from conversation to conversation. Advice from Sarah’s mother about her employment choices had been a continuation of the admonitions Sarah had received in her teenage years for being too much of a dreamer. Those of her friends who were still struggling to find work in their fields cautioned Sarah to be grateful for any employment at all.

Stepping out of her car Sarah prepared herself mentally. Knowledge that there had to be a better way to make a living was firmly suppressed. Focus on the immediate situation was asserted with a bit of willful cajoling. Acceptance those things she had no control over was a bit more difficult.

Considering her reflection in the car windscreen she sighed, Back into the lion’s den Sarah. Checking her phone for any missed calls or messages received while driving she caught the Mad Bunny grinning a sarcastic retort that her subconscious instantly translated into, ‘more like back into the sausage factory’. Resigned to her fate Sarah entered through the office building’s side door of generic thickly tinted glass since the front entrance was kept permanently locked to dissuade visitors.

As the door opened she was immediately blasted with frigid air that stung her eyes. Within was as generic a scene of office life as could be managed where her arrival was noted immediately. The result was a ripple of muttering, that in turn prompted a number of heads to pop up amid the stained acoustical tiles and faded beige partitions of the drab workspaces. Scowls and salacious grins were equally ignored by Sarah as she made her way to the windowless conference room at the center of the building.

It was a room as unadorned as if the building itself had been condemned, Here only those things too broken or too heavy to bother moving remained. What furniture there was in the room was sitting off center, as if it had been pushed out of the way so that things of value could be more easily removed. Aside from a madly tilting and empty bookshelf, there was a grand marble table, with chips and tears on its glossy surface revealing the